Jonathan Davis, lead singer of nu metal band Korn, says over the phone that he’s “in vocal hell” – in the studio in California, left by the rest of the band to complete his parts on a new album to be released by the end of summer.

“I got another week,” Davis groans. “The band’s done. I got like 12, 13 songs done, I got to get a couple more done. That’s what these f-----s do – they do 25 songs and they give me two weeks to do all of them. They’ve had a whole, like, f-----g six months to write, do all that sh-- and then I always get screwed at the end.”

But Davis, like everyone, is anticipating the new disc in a big way.

Fans will get to hear why when Korn tonight, May 23, plays Sands Bethlehem Event Center.

It will be the band’s first disc in more than a decade, since 2003’s “Take a Look in the Mirror,” to feature founding guitarist Brian “Head” Welch, who quit Korn that year after being rehabilitated from drug addiction and undergoing a religious conversion.

The phone call comes just days after the band officially announced that Welch had rejoined, after a May 2012 reunion when Welch joined the band for the song “Blind” at Rockingham Speedway in North Carolina.

Davis says he think that show persuaded Welch to rejoin. “When he saw the crowd reaction, I think that really weighed heavy on his heart and he saw what went down and he wanted to do it again.”

Davis says the album restores the double-guitar attack of Welch and James “Munky” Shaffer that let Korn sell 14 million copies of its first six studio albums, five of which hit the Top 10 and two of which – 1998’s five-times-platinum “Follow the Leader” and 1999’s three-times-platinum “Issues” – hit No. 1.

It also gave the band 10 Top 30 Alternative Rock hits, including the gold “Freak on a Leash,” “Got the Life” and “Here to Stay.”

“It’s really cool that Head’s back with us,” Davis says. “We got Munky and Head’s dual guitar thing that they do and it’s really cool that we’re taking everything that we’ve learned since Head’s been gone and putting that all together and then we make it something different. The sound with Munk has evolved over the years.”

Despite word the new disc will move away from the dubstep that the band embraced with D.J. Skrillex on its last disc, 2011’s “The Path of Totality,” Davis saysthe new disc definitely still will include that sound as an element.

“I wouldn’t say dubstep; it’s just electronic,” he says. “It’s not in a dubstep format; it’s more in a rock format. We never want to repeat ourselves. It’s really cool – we’re just using the electronic stuff to highlight the rock, our music.”

Davis says he’s “an EDM freak. I’ve been listening to electronic music since, yeah, when I got in the band.”

“I don’t listen to metal music at all, really,” he says. “I was more into electronic music and more into like goth music and industrial. So it’s just weird – everybody in the band’s into different stuff, and I really loved it.

“And when I heard the dubstep stuff going on, I was like, ‘Man this is exactly what I want.’ It’s bass music. I wouldn’t call it dubstep; I call it bass music what we’re about, what we’re fans of. From London it became dubstep, if it’s from Miami it’s Miami bass music. This is all about the bass. So we just added something even heavier to it.”

But Korn always has been about breaking musical taboos, Davis says.

“A rock band doing electronic music is, I guess, not supposed to sound good,” he says. He says Korn is “just that we’re a bunch of open-minded people, and if it’s good, it’s good. So we all bring our influences to the table and come up with this crazy music we make.”

Davis says it was that open-mindedness that left the door ajar for Welch’s return, even after some very public and very stinging carping when he left the band and became born-again.

Davis says the band’s personal relationships these days are “totally fine. It’s all good, man.”

“He just started this sh-- with us,” Davis says with a laugh. “You know? I could talk that he’s a great musician, and amazing, the great melodies. But so’s Munky and everybody else in the band. It’s just having that person there that we started it all with, you know what I mean?

“It’s crazy that it’s still as good.”

And that it’s still so popular. Davis says reports that Welch was rejoining prompted such a response that the band decided to play some live dates even before the record came out.

“I think everyone, since the festival, just wanted to play with Head,” Davis says. “Give people what they want. A lot of people wanted to see that again. And when we made the announcement … kids were freaking out -- crying and sh--. Loving it; they’re just so excited.”

And that, Davis says, is the key to Korn’s success.

“Our fans, definitely,” he says. “We love making music and we’ll always make music no matter what, but our fans just love what we do, and we mean something very special to them. Back playing in the ‘90s, kids in high school to kids now – we got little kids coming to our shows now. It’s just so many different generations of people, it’s amazing.

“I’ve seen fans come when they were kids and now they got kids and they’re bringing their kids. It’s pretty crazy.”

Damn I grew up with this band. And I am still their devoted fan. When the band had difficult times, man I was disappointed too. My first T-shirt was of this band, now I ordered T-shirt from http://www.metal-shop.eu/b/korn/ Korn was the second band I had started listening after Metallica.

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JOHN J. MOSER has been around long enough to have seen the original Ramones in a small club in New Jersey, U2 from the fourth row of a theater and Bob Dylan's born-again tours. But he also has the number for All-American Rejects' Nick Wheeler on his cell phone, wrote the first story ever done on Jack's Mannequin and hung out in Wiz Khalifa's hotel room.

OTHER CONTRIBUTORS

JODI DUCKETT: As The Morning Call's assistant features editor responsible for entertainment, she spends a lot of time surveying the music landscape and sizing up the Valley's festivals and club scene. She's no expert, but enjoys it all — especially artists who resonated in her younger years, such as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Tracy Chapman, Santana and Joni Mitchell.

KATHY LAUER-WILLIAMS enjoys all types of music, from roots rock and folk to classical and opera. Music has been a constant backdrop to her life since she first sat on the steps listening to her mother’s Broadway LPs when she was 2. Since becoming a mother herself, she has become well-versed on the growing genre of kindie rock and, with her son in tow, can boast she has seen a majority of the current kid’s performers from Dan Zanes to They Might Be Giants.

STEPHANIE SIGAFOOS: A Jersey native raised in Northeast PA, she was reared in a house littered with 8-tracks, 45s and cassette tapes of The Beatles, Elvis, Meatloaf and Billy Joel. She also grew up on the sounds of Reba McEntire, Garth Brooks and Tim McGraw and can be found traversing the countryside in search of the sounds of a steel guitar. A fan of today's 'new country,' she digs mainstream/country-pop crossovers like Lady Antebellum and Sugarland and other artists that illustrate the genre's diversity.